About the High School Huddle

Welcome to the Citizen-Times' constantly-updated blog for Western North Carolina high school sports. Features include breaking news, scores and stats, college recruiting updates and live blogs from some of the marquee games in WNC. Readers are encouraged to comment on posts, but personal attacks on current athletes, coaches and their families will not be tolerated and are subject to edit or removal at the moderator's discretion.

Pisgah’s run to the 2-A Western Regional girls basketball championship last month was both a blessing and a curse.

Obviously no one at the Haywood County school would take it back.

But the extra couple weeks of hoops was a hindrance to the early development of the Black Bears softball team.

An eight-game winning streak has been just what Pisgah (8-2-1, 8-0) needed. Gardner-Webb recruit Mahaila Irvin and Shelby Tomassi each had three hits in Friday’s 10-0 rout of visiting East Henderson.

“As a team, we’re actually bonding really well even though we have a lot of young people,” Irvin said.

“Our seniors are really taking the lead as well as our juniors and younger people. We really have respect for each other. I really think we’re capable of going far and having a really good record. I think we can make history with this team.”

Irvin is one of three seniors for the Black Bears (Taylor Galyean and Maceon McCracken are the others). And her assessment of the team is quite notable considering Irvin was the catcher for Pisgah’s NCHSAA 2-A championship squad in 2011.

A sign commemorating the title from two years ago hangs above the outfield fence in Canton.

The Black Bears did not put any balls over that fence Friday, but their bats sprayed balls just about everywhere else until Tomassi’s RBI single ended the Western North Carolina Athletic Conference game in the fifth inning.

Tomassi finished the game with four RBIs. Sheridan Pressley was 2-for-3 with two runs scored.

Pitching-wise, Kuykendall has surrendered just four earned runs in 42 innings.

She played shortstop on Friday, which allowed Makayla Tipton to blank the visiting Eagles. Tipton gave our four hits and had a half-dozen strikeouts.

“We got off to a slow start, but now we’re really finding out what it takes to be successful,” Pisgah coach Cyrena Goodwin said.

“Callie has really worked hard and she’s starting to get a reputation locally. Mahaila deserves a lot of credit for helping her with that. And the best thing about this group is that they’re a young team. When they’re playing (a tough opponent), they just go at it because they don’t know any different.”

Former Owen baseball standout Steven Hensley will begin the Colorado Rockies portion of his professional career with Double-A Tusla (Okla.).

Hensley flew out to Oklahoma earlier today after being traded from the Seattle Mariners on Thursday in exchange for pitcher Aaron Harang and cash.

Hensley, who led the Warhorses to the 2-A Western Regional championship championship in 2005, had been assigned to Seattle’s Triple-A team (Tacoma, Wash.) where he had made two relief apperances without a decision. Hensley’s career pitching record in the minor leagues is 30-30 with a 4.48 earned-run average. The right-hander has 374 strikeouts in 121 games.

A group of college basketball seniors headlined by Christ School alum Mason Plumlee will be in town Sunday for the annual Crossfire-ACC All-Star game.

Plumlee and Co. began their traditional barnstorming tour through North Carolina with a game Thursday night in Greensboro.

More from the Greensboro News-Record:

GREENSBORO — With about 15 minutes left in the first half of Thursday’s basketball game at Southeast Guilford, Southwest Guilford’s Terrell Leach and Greensboro Day’s Christian Hairston checked in to guard Duke’s Seth Curry and Wake Forest’s C.J. Harris.

Wait, what?

It was all part of the fun of the first stop on the annual ACC Barnstorming Tour, where former players from North Carolina, Duke, N.C. State and Wake Forest faced off with high school players, coaches and teachers from the area.

The ACC All-Stars ended up winning 107-86, but the final score was a footnote on a night that defense took a backseat and high-flying alley oops grabbed center stage.

Curry and Blue Devils teammate Mason Plumlee were the game’s headliners after North Carolina’s Dexter Strickland and N.C. State’s Scott Wood and Richard Howell were not able to make their scheduled appearances.

Three girls soccer players from Reynolds and Roberson have been invited to play in the July 23 East-West All-Star game in Greensboro.

Rockets defender Alicia Wood had her fourth assist of the season in Monday’s 2-1 win at Roberson. She is a four-year varsity player for Reynolds (12-1-2, 6-0-1) which is the only team in the Mountain Athletic Conference without a MAC loss.

Emily McCord

Midfielder Maddie Brock and defender Emily McCord will represent Roberson (10-1-1, 4-1-0) in the East-West game. Brock has signed with Wake Forest. She shares the Rams’ lead in assists (11) and ranks in goals (15). McCord has signed with Presbyterian and was the 2012 MAC Defensive Player of the Year.